Temporal coverage: 7 June 2015 - present
The AMSR2 Wind Speed layer indicates the speed at which air is moving over the ocean and is measured in meters per second (m/s). Wind is caused by the difference in atmospheric pressure between high and low pressure weather systems. The AMSR2 instrument measures the ocean surface roughness and this is correlated to wind speeds at 10 meters above the water’s surface. The wind speed layer is useful for looking at areas of high wind and how it affects the weather in these regions.
The Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) instrument is a conically scanning passive microwave radiometer sensing microwave radiation at 12 channels and 6 frequencies ranging from 6.9 to 89 GHz on board the Global Change Observation Mission – Water 1 (GCOM-W1) satellite. This layer is part of the GCOM-W1 AMSR2 Level-2B rain and ocean (combined) product, which is calculated by the Goddard PROFiling algorithm (GPROF) 2010 version 2 using resampled brightness temperature (Level-1R) data provided by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The imagery resolution is 2 km and sensor resolution is 5 km. The temporal resolution is twice daily (day and night).
References: NRT AMSR2 L2B Global Swath GSFC Profiling Algorithm 2010; Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) and GCOM-W (AMSR2) Rainfall Products